


I'm a Little Unsteady

by TheAutotheist



Series: Time Worth Saving [2]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Double fix-it, Fix-It, Gen, Talking, coldflash if you squint, coldwave if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 10:01:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7569865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAutotheist/pseuds/TheAutotheist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Time had told Len that he would be different, that he wouldn’t be able to live a normal human life after coming back out of death and the timestream, he thought that had meant he’d have a different view of time. He thought it was just something he could get used to. He didn’t think it would be like this.</p>
<p>Len deals with not being dead, and has a much-needed conversation with Barry before he does something stupid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm a Little Unsteady

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically Barry's therapy session with Leonard Snart. Also, a bit more of an explanation of those time powers I mentioned in the last story.

When Time had told Len that he would be different, that he wouldn’t be able to live a normal human life after coming back out of death and the timestream, he thought that had meant he’d have a different view of time, as evidenced by the strange mirages he saw of people’s immediate pasts and futures, like after-images, and future-images. He thought it was just something he could get used to. He didn’t think it would be like this.

He’d barely had a moment once he’d found Mick and Lisa to be punched, kissed, and punched again amidst screeches and hugs and tears. And  _ no _ , he was not going to say who did what, since neither of the three of them ever did anything like that. And then the next thing he knew, he was staring at Mick and Lisa across the room, sitting on the floor with a bottle of something between them as they talked in hushed voices. Mick had that little silver ring on a chain around his neck and he was holding it up to look at it while Lisa looked like she had been crying. But it didn’t feel like he was really there. It was like he was looking through a sepia lens, an observer only, not a participant. 

He came back to Mick’s arms around his shoulders to keep him standing, and found he had trouble focusing on either figure in front of him.

“What the hell, Len?” Mick grunted, his hands tight on Len’s arms.

“What happened?” Len asked. He looked between them and was surprised to see honest fear on Lisa’s face. He hadn’t seen her afraid like that since… since Lewis. 

“You  _ faded _ , Lenny,” she said. “And got blurry. Kind of like how the Flash does. But not from going really fast. It was like...” She glanced at Mick.

“It was like you were going out of focus,” Mick supplied.

“Huh,” Len said.

“What was that?” Mick asked. He hadn’t moved his hands from Len’s shoulders.

“So I may have had a conversation with Time itself, and it told me I wouldn’t come back… normal.”

“The hell does that mean?” Mick grumbled.

“Your guess is as good as mine. Though whatever just happened was probably part—”

The scene changed again. But this time, he didn’t find himself at another moment in the same room. Instead, he was standing outside, in the dark, on an old forest road. Wait, this looked familiar. He looked to the side and saw Mick going toe to toe with Vandal Savage, while in the distance, Raymond fought against those bird monsters they had come across in the 50s. This time, it wasn’t so much sepia as grey. Like he was viewing it from even farther away.

“—of it,” he finished lamely. He was looking through time, he got that now. But how was it happening? Could he control this? What was happening to his body in the present?

_ “Lenny!” _ he heard from very far away, like someone was yelling through a storm. 

“Is this what it looks like when speedsters travel through time?” he wondered out loud as he watched Mick. He turned back towards the direction he’d heard his name and said, “Did you know speedsters can travel through time? Just by  _ running _ .”

While he still saw the scene in front of him, it felt like his body was being picked up and carried somewhere, which was very disorienting considering he could see his own two feet standing in the dirt.

_ “Hang on, Lenny. Don’t you dare disappear right after coming back from the dead.” _

_ “Why would they help him?” _

_ “Cause they helped me. And last time they saw Lenny, he was warning them. Besides, they’re heroes. They have to help.” _

_ “Better be right about that.” _

_ “Where else can we take him?” _

Len wanted to tell the voices to stop talking about him. It felt like bugs buzzing around his head. Instead, he watched Mick turn towards Vandal Savage and light him on fire. The man screamed as he burned. It was a satisfying sight, but Mick didn’t look satisfied.

He turned and he wasn’t standing on dirt anymore. Instead, he found himself in some kind of industrial complex, concrete under his feet. A giant metal ring loomed over him. Along the outer rim of the structure, he saw two streaks of light race and race around each other. As he watched, the streaks came into better focus. The red and yellow turned into the Flash. He ran with lightning in his wake. The other figure was similar to, but slightly different from the Flash. For one, he wore a black suit, and trailed blue lightning. For another, he was much taller and bulkier than Barry. Len had never been able to see anything but a blur when Barry ran, but this time he could see the two speedsters clearly. It was breathtaking watching a being—two beings—move that fast.

And then there were three. Two Barrys, one Zoom. One Barry and Zoom started fighting on the ground, while the second Barry ran and ran and ran around the… thing. Len stared as Barry number two literally dissolved into light and destroyed whatever had been forming in the sky.

“Barry…” Len whispered.

His eyes tracked Barry and Zoom around the complex, until they settled on the ground once more with Barry looming over Zoom. Len had never seen Barry so angry. He was only a moment away from killing the other speedster with his bare hands. But a portal opened in the sky and two monstrous creatures flew out. Ah, those would be the time wraiths Time had mentioned.

One went straight for Zoom, while the other paused to look at Len where he stood not too far away from the action. No one else had noticed him at all. The time wraith seemed to contemplate something as it observed him, but then it turned to join its companion in killing the black racer. 

When Len turned back to Barry, he found him staring right at him. For a moment, he thought the rest of the Flash’s group was gong to see him too, but it seemed none of them noticed him. Barry opened his mouth to speak, but his voice also came from far away.

_ “Snart?” _

Len blinked. He wasn’t standing in the industrial complex anymore. He wasn’t standing at all. He was lying in some kind of hospital bed, in a room with no natural light. He looked to his left and found Barry sitting in a chair by the bed, with a frown on his face.

“Barry?” Len asked, confused.

“Welcome back,” Barry said. He leaned forward so he could rest his elbows on his knees. He wasn’t dressed as the Flash anymore. He wore normal jeans, and a red jacket over a blue button-up shirt. Something about the ensemble was jarring, and Len couldn’t figure out why. He’d seen Barry dressed in regular, civilian clothes before.

“What happened? Where am I?” Len pushed himself into a sitting position and looked around the room.

“You’re at S.T.A.R. Labs. Your,” Barry frowned again, “friends brought you here when they couldn’t figure out what to do.”

“Friends?”

“Lisa and Rory.”

“And what exactly happened?”

Barry looked at him for a moment. “We’re still trying to figure that out.”

Len looked at the doorway. Through the glass partition, he could see the room in S.T.A.R. Labs he recognized as the main headquarters for Team Flash. He thought they called it the Cortex, or something. As he watched, Mick and Lisa rushed into the room as if on speed, like someone had hit the fast forward button on their actions. Mick had Len in his arms, and oh, Len could see what Mick had meant earlier. Len’s body looked out of focus, and it was possible to see through his hands and feet. Len couldn’t make out any words, since the figures were moving too fast, but he could see Team Flash first defensive, then moving to help.

“Snart!”

Len yanked his consciousness back into his body lying on the hospital bed and turned to look at Barry again.

Barry actually looked worried about him. He was half out of his chair, with his arm hovering over Len’s shoulder, without actually touching him.

“What?” Len asked.

“You started to blur again.”

Len glanced at the doorway to the Cortex again, which was vacant, but didn’t let his mind dwell there. Instead, he turned his entire focus on Barry. “So where is everyone?”

Barry settled back in his chair. “They went to get food. Cisco didn’t trust Heatwave to stay here while he went out, and Rory didn’t trust him to not do something while he was gone. Lisa went to keep Cisco company, and Caitlin went to keep an eye on all of them.”

Len rolled his eyes and huffed out a laugh. “And you?”

“I’m the only one Lisa and Rory trusted to not turn you over to the police while unconscious.”

“Ironic.”

Barry smiled lightly, but then the expression slipped off his face just as fast as it had come. Interesting. “We do have a deal, after all, Snart.”

“Didn’t stop you from sending me to prison for patricide.” 

“Our deal was you don’t kill people. That still counted as killing someone even if he wasn’t innocent or collateral damage.”

“Yeah, well, that bastard deserved to die.”

Len expected Barry to contradict him, and tell him something about how he didn’t get to decide that, or didn’t get to act on that, even if it was true. Instead, when Len looked at him again, Barry was looking off to the side as if he was lost in thought.

So far, all the things Len had seen had been moments from the past, so that meant the Barry sitting here beside him had almost killed a man with his bare hands. An enemy, but still a human being. Even though it hadn’t come to that, he’d still stood aside as something much worse happened to the man.

“What did he do to you?”

Barry’s head whipped around almost at Flash speed. He narrowed his eyes at Len and said suspiciously, “Who?”

“The black speedster.” He’d heard the rumors that had been going around before he was recruited onto Rip’s mission, the name said in hushed tones. “Zoom.”

Barry was really very bad at lying. This was something Len had seen first hand. But this time it looked like he didn’t even try to hide the baffled surprise that came to his face. “What?”

“You were ready to kill him.”

“How can you possibly  _ know _ that?” Barry asked, his voice rising a few octaves.

Len waved off the question. “Didn’t think the Flash was one for murder. “

“That’s not…” Barry sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “More  _ importantly _ , how in the world are you actually alive? Lisa and Rory didn’t exactly explain when they brought you in. Hell, they didn’t even seem to know. And Professor Stein and Jax said you  _ died _ on their time traveling mission.”

Len hummed in agreement. “Good to hear they made it back to Central City. I didn’t get a chance to ask Mick about how taking down Vandal Savage went before all this happened.” He twirled his hand to indicate the room. “Do you know if everyone else made it out okay?”

Barry shook his head. “Yeah, they’re all fine. You were the only casualty.” He frowned at Len again. “Or, not.” He stared straight at Len. “You gonna explain that? They said the whole place blew up, and that you were in the middle of it pressing down the button. How did you survive?”

“I didn’t.”

Both Barry’s eyebrows rose towards his hairline. “Trying to tell me I’m talking to a ghost?”

Len chuckled. “Not exactly. Though apparently I’m not entirely human anymore.”

“Well, neither am I.”

Len titled his head as he looked at Barry. “So how long have you been able to travel through time?”

Barry’s expression was still surprised, but less shocked. Perhaps because every other thing Len had said had been a revelation. He considered him for a moment and then said, “Little over a year. The day you decided to kidnap Cisco and have him rebuild your guns, that was the first time.”

This time Len raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Then why didn’t you know Lisa was going to kidnap your friend?”

Barry shook his head. “I went back just before that. All of that hadn’t happened before. I went back by about a day, and because of the things I changed, you had the opportunity to do all that.”

“So I wouldn’t have gotten my gun back if you hadn’t run back in time?”

“Probably not.”

“Well, thank you for that, then.”

Barry shook his head, but there was an amused smile on his lips, that he seemed to be unaware of.

“What did you change?”

“Mark Mardon was going to destroy the city with a tidal wave.”

This time Len frowned. “Oh  _ really _ ? I would have had to hunt the bastard down and kill him myself if he’d done that to  _ my _ city.”

This time, Barry smiled openly. “And you say you’re not a hero.”

“I’m n—” Len sighed, and gave up on the statement. Stupid Legends team with their stupid heroics. 

“I think sacrificing yourself so your team can live counts as being a hero, Snart.” The smiled slipped off Barry’s face again. “Speaking of, are you going to tell me how you’re alive? Or how you know any of those things you couldn’t possibly know?”

Len settled back against the pillow behind him. “I died in the Vanishing Point. Not recommended, apparently. Had a nice little conversation with Time, who showed off by wearing your face, and my sister’s face, and Mick’s face.” He turned his head to look at Barry again. “Is the Speedforce also vindictive and full of itself?”

Barry quirked one eyebrow, but Len wasn’t able to get much more of a rise out of him than that. “Well, it did like taking on the appearances of my loved ones in a misguided attempt to put me at ease.”

Len nodded. “Time may have mentioned some things about speedsters and the Speedforce. And then it dropped me off in 2016 with the warning that I would be alive, but not normal after dying in the Vanishing Point, and interacting with Time that way.” He looked back towards the entrance to the Cortex. “Which seems to mean I can see these afterimages of people’s immediate pasts, and occasionally drift back into the past events of the people I am around.”

“Such as?” Barry prompted. 

Len turned to look back at him. “I saw you race Zoom. I saw the time wraiths kill him.”

“You know what the time wraiths are?”

“Time said they were a gift to the Speedforce to keep its speedsters in check. Like I said, vindictive.” 

Barry sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “And here I thought time travel and alternative dimensions were the strangest things I would have to deal with. But no, Time and the Speedforce talk and occasionally pluck people out of their lives to have vague conversations. And hey, sometimes my villains become heroes and come back to life.”

Len smirked. “Sounds about right.”

Barry lowered his hand slowly and looked at him. It was the look Len would give a particularly difficult to crack safe. Barry was looking at Len like a puzzle he was trying to figure out.

“What?”

“So you came back, and now you can… see through time.”

“Seems like it.”

“Only your body doesn’t actually travel through time. It starts to fade when you look through time. Which can’t be a good thing.”

“So then that’s not what happens to you?”

Barry shook his head. “I actually, physically, move through time. I can either travel back through my own personal timeline, and take the place of where I was in the past, or I can travel back independently, which makes me a time remnant.” At Len’s blank look, he clarified, “There’ll be two of me existing at once.”

“Sounds like a paradox.”

“Time wraiths don’t like it. Zoom used the technique a lot, by going back by a second to create two of himself. That’s why the time wraiths went after him.”

Len scooted up further on the bed. “That’s why you created that… time remnant of yourself when you were racing him. To attract them?”

Barry nodded slowly. His mouth was a thin line. It didn’t take a genius to see the deep, emotional pain Zoom had caused Barry. This was more than just a enemy that had threatened him and his city.

Len drew one leg up under him so he could turn on the bed to actually face Barry. “You never answered my question.”

“Which one?”

“What did he do to you, Scarlet?”

Barry visibly stiffened at the question. “Why do you care?”

“Because the more emotionally distraught you get, the more out of focus you get.” It was true. He’d been trying not to focus on the way Barry’s—not after-images— _ fore _ -images seemed to be doing different things. It was as if every second he was contemplating taking his future in a different direction.

“Wait, you’re still seeing things?”

Len rolled his eyes at the clinical, scientific tone Barry took on. Mick and Lisa had brought him here to help him, not for him to play therapist to the Flash, after all. “Of course. I’ve been seeing after- and fore-images of everyone since I got back. But no, I’m not seeing moments of the past anymore.” Through sheer force of will. “The problem is, I can see your after-images clearly. But your fore-images are erratic. I’d need to compare them to people who  _ aren’t _ speedsters, but I’m fairly certain your ability to time-travel is throwing things off.”

Barry frowned heavily. He leaned his elbows on his knees again and clasped his hands together in front of his face to hide his mouth. He looked at Len for a long moment.

Len didn’t understand the expression at first, but then it clicked into place. “You’re planning to time travel again. In the near future.”

Barry’s frown deepened. “Are you seeing that, or is that a theory?”

“I’m good at reading people, Red. And I’m going to get a lot better once I learn how to use this.”

“Leonard Snart with the ability to see through time. We’re going to need to come up with a new name for you.”

“I like Captain Cold,” Len said. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and braced his palms on the edge of it. In this position, their knees were only a few inches apart. “Don’t deflect, Barry. I have a feeling if you screw with time, it’ll be bad news for me.” They both knew it was a weak excuse to not admit he actually cared about Barry.

“He killed my dad.” Barry sighed. “Zoom,” he clarified, as if Len hadn’t inferred that much. “You asked what he did to me. He killed my dad right in front of me. And I thought…” Barry took in a long, shuddering breath and moved his hands up to cover his face. “I thought I had come to terms with my mom’s murder, only to lose him.” He didn’t move his hands as he kept talking, so Len couldn’t see his face. “I came out of the Speedforce confident in the idea that the Speedforce was actively working against J—Zoom, and that it had my back. Everyone warned me, but I thought they were just being paranoid. There was nothing wrong with optimism.” Barry shook his head. “It wasn’t optimism. It was arrogance. Zoom rubbed that in my face. And I beat him. I beat him and I wanted to kill him so bad. I wanted to make his heart stop, I wanted to feel that in my own hand.”

“Barry…” Len said, half in surprise, half in sympathy. He wasn’t a very tactile person. So he surprised both of them when he reached out and set his hand on Barry’s shoulder.

Barry tensed briefly, but then relaxed into the touch. “He thought if I saw my parent die in front of me, it would make me like him.”

“What, evil?”

Barry shrugged the shoulder Len wasn’t squeezing.

“Scarlet, your mom died when you were a kid. So you became a cop, not a killer.”

“Not a cop—”

“You gained super speed, and you used it to help people when every other metahuman in this god forsaken city tried to use their new powers to hurt people or steal from them. Hell, I didn’t even need superpowers to do that. And even after I betrayed you, you helped me and mine.”

“I wasn’t just going to turn Lisa away—”

“And you didn’t kill Zoom. You stopped him, saved the city again.”

Barry finally lowered his hands. His eyes were wet, but he wasn’t quite crying. “Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because you need to hear it. As I’ve said before, I’m a crook, and a liar and no good.”

Barry’s lip quirked. “And as I’ve said, and have been proven right, there is good in you.”

Len finally pulled his hand back so he could wave it dismissively. “That is neither here nor there. Point is, you help people like me, you saved as many of the bad metahumans as you could. You are a  _ hero _ , Barry. Tragedy isn’t going to change that.”

Barry smiled weakly, even though he still looked on the verge of tears. “I feel so hollow. Like the more I try to help and do good, the more bad things happen around me, to the people I love.”

“Bad things happen anyway. They always will. Doesn’t matter how good you are.”

“That’s not exactly reassuring.”

“But it’s honest.”

“Honestly from Leonard Snart. Now we really are in the Twilight Zone.”

Len smirked lightly. He leaned back so he wasn’t so close to Barry. “So what I’m seeing... You’re planning to run back in time, right? To save your father?”

Barry shook his head. “Not my father.” He met Len’s eyes again. “My mother.”

“Your…” Len stared at him. “You mean fifteen years back? Can you do that?”

Barry nodded. “I had a chance, about a year ago, to do that. I actually made the trip and everything. I was given the opportunity by the… the man who killed her. He was a speedster too. He’d been fighting me, some version of me in the future, and they—we—had run back there during the fight. He was there to kill me as a kid, but my future self saved me. So he took his frustration out by killing my mom. Only, he lost his connection to the Speedforce, and was trapped in the twenty-first century.”

Len could keep up with the story pretty well until that point. “Twenty-first century? Just how the hell old do you live to be, Scarlet?”

The half-assed attempt at a joke did make Barry smile a bit. “Who knows. I’m not really sure how I end up in the twenty-second century, but apparently it’s going to happen.”

“Avoid Vandal Savage. He’s a nasty piece of work during the 2150s.”

“Noted.” Barry gave Len a smile, then returned to his story. “His action apparently stopped me from becoming the Flash. And he needed another speedster in order to open a portal to return to his own time. So he had to manufacture a way for me to get my speed. Built the Particle Accelerator and caused the accident—”

“Hang on, you’re telling me  _ Harrison Wells _ was really from the twenty-second century and a speedster that tried to kill you?”

“Yes. Well, no.” Barry frowned and then shook his head. “It’s complicated. Anyway, the point is, he told me how to travel back to that night. By opening the portal one direction, he’d be able to travel through time the other direction. Mutually beneficial. But when I got there, I saw that other Flash, my older self, who will one day fight the Reverse Flash. He stopped me from saving my mom. Instead, I sat with her, so she wasn’t alone when she died.” He put his face in his hand again. “And I think now that wasn’t the right choice.”

Len watched him. “If she doesn’t die, what changes?”

Barry shook his head. “I don’t know. I still become the Flash, I guess. But everything else could be different. My dad doesn’t go to prison. My parents are both alive.”

“Something worse could happen.”

“How can it possibly be worse than this!” Barry yelled at him. He dropped his hands to clench them into fists at his side.

Len looked at him calmly. “Scarlet,” he said slowly, “I’ll admit I didn’t go on Rip Hunter’s little crusade for altruistic reasons, not at first. I told Mick it was about the score, about the things we could steal in the past that we’d never have the chance to steal now. But that wasn’t it either. I went on that mission because I wanted a crack at changing my own personal history. Our first mission took us to 1975. And I thought…” Len huffed out a laugh. “I thought I could change my father. Make it so he didn’t become what he was.” He paused to look in Barry’s eyes. “Didn’t do a damn thing. It was only a slight hiccup of a difference from how it had happened before. Changing your past doesn’t work. Things will still happen.”

“Are you saying my mother is supposed to die?”

“I’m saying maybe you can’t change it.”

“That… what the hell is the point of having this power, this ability if I can’t change things?”

Len leaned back and shrugged. “I’m not Time and I’m not the Speedforce. So I’m not going to give you some weird, vague answer about the way the universe works.”

Barry ran his hand over his face. “I feel so useless.”

“You stopped Zoom, didn’t you? Kept him from hurting anyone else’s loved ones. This is what I’m saying, Barry. You are  _ good _ . Like I told you before, don’t try to take a walk on the dark side to accomplish things.”

“Are you saying you betrayed me last year to teach me a lesson?”

“I betrayed you last year because I wanted to and it suited my needs. But I also kept those metas from killing you.”

“No matter what you think, that didn’t earn you any brownie points.”

Len’s lip quirked. “I did tell you about Mardon and Jesse.”

“Because my team saved Lisa.”

“Well…” Len drawled. “Me convincing you not to go back and fuck with Time, who, by the way, does not like speedsters, and does not like being fucked with, consider that pay back for all this.”

“We didn’t actually figure out how to stop you from drifting through time.”

“I seem to be doing fine now.” He watched Barry, and then smirked when his fore-images coalesced into a consistent timeline, instead of the erratic set of possibilities they had been before.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Barry asked suspiciously.

“You took my advice.”

“What? I haven’t made up my mind yet…”

“Yes you have.”

“How do you know?”

Len trailed his finger lazily through the air, tracing the motion of Barry’s fore-images. “I can see it.” His smirk got that much more wicked. “Ooh, Scarlet, it is going to be so much harder to stop me when I can see you coming.”

“You can’t see me coming,” Barry scoffed. “Just because you can see my immediate past or future, doesn’t mean you can keep up with me if I’m running mach 1.”

“I have a whole new set of abilities. You have no  _ idea _ what I can do,” Len practically purred.

“And what happened to being a hero, anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be good now?” Barry pouted and it made him look that much younger than he actually was.

Len shrugged nonchalantly. “Just because I helped save the world doesn’t mean I don’t still like stealing shiny objects.”

“You have got to be kidding me. You pulled a martyr play, got a second chance at life, and you’re going to go back to being a thief?”

“Hey, I told you before, Scarlet. I love this game, and I’m very good at it.” He smirked. “And now you're the one who’s going to have to up his game.”

Barry stared at him and then he burst out laughing. “Okay, bring it on,  _ Captain Cold _ !”

Len smirked. “Oh, I will,  _ Flash _ .”

Len caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and he turned to look out at the entrance to the Cortex again. Barry glanced over too. He spared Len a confused look, but a moment later the others wandered through the door.

“What kind of man likes a burger prepared that way?” Cisco was saying as he walked in and set several bags of fast food on the desk. He caught sight of Len and Barry looking at him and said, “Oh.”

“Lenny!” Lisa was at his side in a moment. She tentatively reached out and touched his shoulder, probably to make sure he was solid.

“Well, it looks like he’s corporeal again,” Cisco threw out. He stayed where he was in the Cortex with Caitlin, far away from Len, while Mick moved into the doorway of the infirmary.

Barry seemed to suddenly realize he was in a room with three of his enemies, so he got up and flashed out to the Cortex, to stand between them and his friends. Len just rolled his eyes at the action and pushed himself to his feet.

“You okay?” Mick asked with a grunt. His eyes searched back and forth, taking in Len’s form, scanning for injuries.

“Seems like it,” Len said as he straightened his jacket.

“What fixed… whatever this was?” Lisa asked curiously.

“I think I just needed to be in the right place for the sake of the timeline.” Len looked past Lisa’s head at Barry. Barry titled his head and met Len’s eyes. He must have seen something reassuring, because he gave Len a tentative smile. Len responded with a smirk and turned his attention back to his partners in crime. “No reason to stick around here, anymore, then.”

Lisa rolled her eyes and turned on her heel to walk out of the infirmary. “Does that mean you’re finally going to explain how you’re  _ back _ ?” she asked over her shoulder.

“Maybe,” Len drawled as he followed.

“Ya better,” Mick said as he snatched two of the paper bags of fast food off the desk.

“Hey!” Cisco said automatically, but then shrank back under the look Mick gave him. “You know, never mind. Go right ahead, big guy. Take all the food you want.”

So Mick grabbed a third bag. Cisco looked like he wanted to protest, but he kept his mouth closed. Lisa skipped up to him and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Thanks, Cisco! Until next time.” She winked and followed Mick out. She put those pickpocket skills Len had taught her to use to steal french fries out of one of the bags Mick held.

Len moved to follow the two out, but he stopped and looked at Barry for a moment. His fore-images held, in a cohesive stream, no erratic potential futures. “Don’t make me come back here to straighten you out, Scarlet,” he said, but his voice held no threat.

Barry snorted and crossed his arms. “Don’t lose your grip on the present so your friends are forced to  _ drag _ you back here.”

Len titled his head slightly. “You good?”

“Yeah,” Barry said. “You?”

Len nodded. “See you around, Flash.” He waved his hand in a lackluster gesture and walked out the door.

He just caught Cisco’s voice saying, in a very accusatory tone, “Wait, are you and Captain Cold  _ friends _ now?”

And Barry's response, “I honestly don’t know.” And then he moved out of earshot and found Mick and Lisa waiting for him out front of the building, sharing the food between them.

“So what was all that with the Flash?” Mick asked. He was leaning against the side of a non-descript van. Must’ve been how they got to S.T.A.R. Labs.

“Who, by the way, is not very good at keeping his secret identity a secret,” Lisa said. “It makes it look way less impressive that you were able to discover it.

“Nothing,” Len said. He moved between them to grab one of the bags of food. “He just needed someone who had also interacted with time travel to talk him out of doing something stupid.”

Lisa frowned, but moved out of the way so Len could climb into the passenger seat of the van. She climbed in behind him and leaned over the seat to ask, “What does time travel have to do with the Flash?”

“Speedsters can run so fast they travel through time.”

“ _ What _ ?” Mick said as he sat down in the driver’s seat. He turned to give Len a shocked expression. 

“You didn’t know that?” Len asked. “I would think the Time Masters would have been aware of who—or what—else was capable of time travel.”

Mick grunted. “Not exactly something they would tell their lowly bounty hunters.”

“Now you  _ really _ have a lot to explain,” Lisa said from the back seat.

Len hummed in agreement. “Sure. But first, I’m starving.” He dove into the bag of fast food. “And then I think I’d like to test out these brand new time powers and see what we can knock over without being detected.”

Mick snorted. “Sure thing, Lenny.”

Lisa screeched in laughter as Mick tore out of the parking lot. “This’ll be fun!” she said as she leaned between them.

Len smirked to himself. He had to say he agreed, wholeheartedly. 

**Author's Note:**

> It is so hard to write these two without it getting shippy. Not that I'm against that ship. There aren't nearly enough Coldwave fics, so I wandered over to the Coldflash tag, and somehow got sucked into reading tons of that.


End file.
